Region keeps healthy lead in NIH contracts

SUCCESSFUL BIDS

December 16, 1991|By David Conn | David Conn,National Institutes of Health and the Washington/Baltimore Regional Association. @

Nearly half the contracts -- and seven out of 10 research dollars -- let by the National Institutes of Health in the last fiscal year again landed in the Baltimore-Washington market, a new report shows.

In fiscal 1991, which ended in September, companies and institutions in the Washington-Baltimore region received 47 percent of all NIH contracts, up from 45 percent the year before, according to a report to be released today by the Washington-Baltimore Regional Association.

The 714 contracts awarded in the region were worth $337 million -- a $12.8 million, or 3.95 percent, increase over the previous year's awards. That represented nearly 70 percent of the $484.5 million NIH awarded nationwide.

More than 20 percent of the region's share went to one Virginia company. Program Resources, of Reston, Va., was the nation's leader in NIH research, with four contracts worth $99 million, much of it for work with the National Cancer Institute, according to the WBRA. Program Resources received more than 2.5 times as much NIH revenue in fiscal 1991 as the entire Boston region.

In second place was Westat Inc. of Rockville, which garnered 43 contracts worth about $35.7 million for work dealing largely with AIDS and cancer. Coming in third and fourth were Advanced Bioscience Laboratories of Kensington ($19.2 million in contracts) and the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions ($12.8 million), WBRA reported.

The Baltimore-Washington region, which the WBRA defines as extending from Northern Virginia to the Maryland-Pennsylvania line, enjoyed the largest dollar increase of the top 10 regions, and the only percentage increase among the top six.

That's partly because the NIH awarded $10.9 million less in contracts in fiscal 1991 than the $495.4 million it awarded last year, the WBRA reported. The Boston/Lawrence/Salem area, in second place with $38.5 million in 1991 contracts, attracted $397,122 less in contracts this year. And the third place region, New York/Northern New Jersey/ Trenton, suffered a 17 percent setback this year, winning $25.8 million in contracts from the NIH.

Among the rest of the top 10 areas, only the regions surrounding Houston and Detroit were net winners this year. Those areas showed 20.4 percent and 9.4 percent increases, respectively, in the dollar value of contracts they received.

"The stability witnessed by our region is certainly a reflection of the outstanding medical research and educational resources contained within our market -- an intellectual infrastructure so important to our future success," Donald P. Hutchinson, president of the Maryland Chamber and Economic Growth Associates, said in a statement.